Max Blecher's father was a successful Jewish merchant and the owner of a porcelain shop. Blecher attended primary and secondary school in Roman, Romania. After receiving his baccalaureat, Blecher left for Paris to study medicine. Shortly thereafter, in 1928, he was diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis (Pott's disease) and forced to abandon his studies. He sought treatment at various sanatoriums: Berck-sur-Mer in France, Leysin in Switzerland and Tekirghiol in Romania For the remaining ten years of his life, he was confined to his bed and practically immobilized by the disease. Despite his illness, he wrote and published his first piece in 1930, a short story called "Herrant" in Tudor Arghezi's literary magazine Bilete de papagal. He contributed to André Breton's literary review Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution and carried on an intense correspondence with the foremost writers and philosophers of his day such as André Breton, André Gide, Martin Heidegger, Illarie Voronca, Geo Bogza, Mihail Sebastian, and Sașa Pană. In 1934 he published Corp transparent, a volume of poetry.

In 1935, Blecher's parents moved him to a house on the outskirts of Roman where he continued to write until his death in 1938 at the age of 28. During his lifetime he published two other major works, Întâmplări în irealitate imediată (Adventures in Immediate Irreality) and Inimi cicatrizate (Scarred Hearts), as well as a number of short prose pieces, articles and translations. Vizuina luminată: Jurnal de sanatoriu (The Lit-Up Burrow: Sanatorium Journal) was published posthumously in part in 1947 and in full in 1971